HackerU Cyber Security Red Team Specialist Course Review.
The course took about 9 months, including time spend between weekends, when I’ve learned materials and practice labs. Those times include early mornings and sometimes long nights, which honestly I miss. So from this point, I want to say thanks to my family for time management and patience. Second, I want to say thanks to people from my group for their support and engagement. At the end, I want also say that polish HackerU team done a great job. Time spent on this course, knowledge and experience I gained was definitely worth it.
Picture above presents my results from Cywar CTF training platform. As you can see, I was able to place myself on 123 position from the whole word course record, and I was third in my class. My class consist of people like me with no previous cyber-security background and even IT experience, but fortunately for us there were people with strong networking or programming or other useful IT backgrounds.
As a group, we were connected via our Discord server. That way we could be in touch not only when the lesson occurs but between them too. As the time pass, people from other edition of the course join us, so we started to create a community.
And for those who are interested in the course. As I said before, I didn’t have any previous experience with cybersecurity, and I didn’t even work in the I.T. industry. I was using privately Linux OS and like to learn about different Linux distributions, nowadays cyberattacks, new technologies. I am curious about things like that. Likewise, I also have some basic knowledge about websites (HTML, JS, CSS). Furthermore, I also started to learn with Tryhackme platform, with I stay till this day and I recommend. From that point, cyber-security look attractive to me. I like the way it was. Interdisciplinary, up-to-date, open for people from other than informatics studies and work experience. Great community open for new people like me. I have to say there was no situation where I ask, and I didn’t get an answer or tip leading me to the right answer. One of the HackerU teacher in his free time contact me on Sunday after 5 PM to help me with my project.
At some point from my perspective, where “I know that I don’t know much”, :) it was kind of a hard decision to make. Take the course or go by my self? We were supposed to be the third group in Poland who goes in to this course. Fortunately for me, when I started there was a small free edition so, I could check in myself, see how the lesson goes, etc. At the very end of my thoughts about all the pros and cons, I decided to gave my trust in to people behind the course and myself, which mean I do ass much as I can to learn and gain experience. Course seems to be, and it was well-prepared and organized. I would only add one free weekend after each module for repeating and fixing the materials. I can say that materials given in this course are well-made. They cover each topic from basic to advance level, and there is hands-on time for labs and practice.
I think it’s worth to mention that we were doing the course during Covid-19 lockdown times. There were some small problems, but we as students and the team was able to manage and learn from them.
So what I’ve learned?, you may ask.
Just to name a few topics: cybersecurity concepts, directions of developments, modern threats, hackers terminology, attack vectors and methods, networking from how devices are connected to what is happening on packet level, how to analyze network traffic, Python basic, intermediate usage in security, we look under the hood of web and mobile application, we learn and practice how to escalate our privileges on Linux and Windows including Active Directory system. We start our preparation for the OSCP exam. We were pushed to solve test and make various projects under some pressure of the given time. I learned how to work and learn online from home, which was totally new for me.
Did the course change something in your life, one my ask?
Yeah!. I need to efficiently manage my time, between family time, full time work and course. A day is only 24 hours long. Also, the perspective about world, companies, people using internet and technologies broaden. I also learn that it is possible to learn new things, influence your own future, change your life and who know maybe follow your destiny.
What’s change?
At the very end of my story, I want to say that thanks to all the things I learned about cybersecurity and myself lead me to the point which from March this year I will change my current carrier path to be SOC Analyst. I’m looking forward to getting experience from the Blue TEAM work.
